Whether you use After Effects to animate a simple DVD title sequence or to create complex special effects, you generally follow the same basic workflow. The Adobe Creative Team demonstrates how to use this workflow to create a simple animated video.

Render and output the final composition so that it can be viewed by others.

In this article, you'll create a simple animated video by using this workflow. Along the way, you'll learn your way around the After Effects interface, which facilitates your work and adapts to each stage of production.

Open and play the Lesson01.mov sample movie to see what you'll create in this exercise. When you're done, quit the QuickTime player. You may delete this sample movie from your hard disk if you have limited storage space.